Pelli Clarke & Partners’ Transition Follows a Script

No one will mistake the succession going on at Pelli Clarke & Partners (PCP) with the fictional one at Waystar Royco that played out over four seasons on HBO. While both the architecture firm and the entertainment conglomerate are global in scope, the  media attention is significantly lower and the bad blood nonexistent in the Pelli family saga. The lack of drama as PCP ushers in its third generation of leadership underscores the careful planning behind the firm’s recent moves.

In July 2023, the firm promoted Graham Banks, Jimmy En-Ming Chang, Kristin Hawkins, and Peter Follett to the rank of partners, bringing a group of younger architects into its top echelon. Four years earlier, Craig Copeland and Darin Cook had moved up to partner. The six architects gathered recently for a video interview and spoke about PCP’s evolution since the death of César Pelli five years ago this month. Fred Clarke, who cofounded the firm in 1977 with Pelli and Pelli’s wife, the landscape architect Diana Balmori, remains active but will become less involved in the near-future. Balmori passed away in 2016.